I dream

“He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, “what do these stones mean?” tell them, “Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.” –Joshua 4:21-22

The older I get, the less I allow myself to dream.  

Peace is the answer, but the question becomes increasingly more complicated.  Reconciliation is replaced with clinging to pride and hurt.  Things like getting married or finding a career morph into checkpoints on a personal timeline. 

I’ve become more skeptical about the possibility of peace.  I don’t know how to fathom the appearance of true reconciliation.  I forget that marriage or careers are callings to passionate servitude, and that they were created to reflect the Kingdom. As time has merged forward, I’ve disregarded childlike faith.

In the wake of coming face to face with all of my deepest desires, I shut down hope.  It is easier to decisively reject dreams than to hope and wait in fervent prayer.  But I awoke this morning, exhausted from reaching my arm tirelessly across that violent river toward all of my dreams.  I am weary from my own rejection of hope.  I long to walk across dry land.  But then I look upon the stones; the reminders in my life where He was faithful to my dreaming.  I regard the moments where He has parted the waters.  I acknowledge His miracles at each corner of my life.  I see the instances where Christ has dreamt on my behalf...He is peace.  He is reconciliation.  He is passionate servitude.  He is my desire, my hope, my dream.

Today I dream in gratitude; today I walk the land.

I spin

“I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That’s why I’m trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning.” -Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower 

As a kid, I loved to spin wildly until I fell.  

We all have tried this: arms outstretched in opposite directions, while the drunkenness of gravity overtakes the body.  I often spun when I was bored or needed a rush…I’m familiar with spinning. As I've grown older, I still spin wildly until I fall. 

I've danced my way around direct answers. 

I've pivoted away from difficult realities. 

I've whirled past anything sincere, coiling tightly around immediate fulfillment.  

I spin fervently in circles in search of my own Shalom. 

Today is a day where I remember the spin.  Each downward spiral revisits my contemplation, making me question my existence.  Darkness does his job when he refines lies until they resemble truth- a true swindler of all things good. Yet as I spin, I can see a figure approach me.  Kind eyes and broken body confront me in the wake of my vertigo. He whispers “Come to me, and I will give you rest.”  My spinning slowly eases and my heart goes quiet when I gaze upon that figure in the distance. For without Him the world is a hopeless circuit of darkness, spinning wildly until it falls.  In Him, though, there is a love more faithful than the morning; a love that shows up in the remnants of each day.  It's a love that weaves hope into this broken world that spins off kilter…this broken world that spins just like me.